Tephrofacts and the First Human Occupation of the French Massif Central Jean-Paul Raynal, Lionel Magoga, Peter Bindon

Tephrofacts and the first human occupation of the French Massif central Jean-Paul Raynal, Lionel Magoga, Peter Bindon To cite this version: Jean-Paul Raynal, Lionel Magoga, Peter Bindon. Tephrofacts and the first human occupation of the French Massif central. The Earliest Occupation of Europe. Proceedings of the European Sci- ence Foundation, Workshop at tautavel, France, 1993, edited by Wil ROEBROEKS and Thus Van KOLFSCHOTEN, 1995, Leiden, Netherlands. pp.129-146. halshs-00004086 HAL Id: halshs-00004086 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00004086 Submitted on 21 Jul 2005 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. European Science Fondation Meeting , Tautavel , sous presse - 1 - TEPHROFACTS AND THE FIRST HUMAN OCCUPATION OF THE FRENCH MASSIF CENTRAL Jean-Paul RAYNAL(1), Lionel MAGOGA(2), Peter BINDON(3) Mots-clés : Massif Central, tephrofacts, pétrographie, Paléolithique ancien. Key-words: France, Massif Central, Tephrofacts, Petrography, Lower Palaeolithic. Résumé: Les auteurs examinent la production par le volcanisme de pseudo-artéfacts. L'existence de ces téphrofacts doit être prise en compte pour l'analyse des outillages réputés très anciens. Dans l'état actuel des recherches, seul le site de Soleilhac offre les meilleures garanties d'une présence humaine très ancienne (0,5-0,6 Ma ?) dans le Massif Central français. Abstract: This paper examines the production of pseudo-artefacts by vulcanism and discusses their presence in supposedly ancient sites in the French Massif-Central. At this time, only the site of Soleilhac offers sufficient evidence for very ancient human occupation of the region (0.5-O.6 Ma ?). (1) Université de Bordeaux 1, Institut du Quaternaire, UMR 9933 CNRS, Avenue des Facultés, F-33405 Talence Cedex. (2) Résidence Raymond, 48 Allée des Ailes, F-03200 Vichy. (3) Department of Anthropology, Western Australian Museum, Francis Street, Perth 6000, Western Australia. European Science Fondation Meeting , Tautavel , sous presse - 2 - Introduction The production of geofacts, objects resulting from natural fracture and imitating artefacts (HAYNES, 1973), is a phenomenon long recognized in many different sedimentary contexts (PEI, 1937; MORTELMANS, 1947; BREUIL, 1955; CLARK, 1958; BOURDIER, 1967; FOURNIER, 1971; RAYNAL et TEXIER, 1989; RAYNAL et al, 1990). A number of works analyse these, particularly for flint, and try to elaborate a method which distinguishes clearly between intentionally flaked objects and products of nature (BOULE, 1889, 1905, 1921; HAWARD, 1911; MOIR, 1911; WARREN, 1914; GRAYSON, 1986; SCHNURRENBERGER and ALAN, 1985; PEACOCK, 1991). The Massif Central in the central mountainous region of France experienced active vulcanism during the Miocene (15-20 M.a) and several glacial events during the Pleistocene. Because vulcanism and frost action generate rock fracturing, there is thus a high probability of the natural occurrence of pseudo-artefacts in this area. Discovery of flint pseudo-tools confused a number of archaeologists during the nineteenth century beginning with TARDY (1869), who reported the discovery of Miocene eoliths from Le Puy Courny in the Cantal. More than fifty years afterwards, MARTY was still arguing for this interpretation (CAPITAN et MARTY, 1924). The Massif Central region is well known for important excavations from the Upper Palaeolithic and has considerable archaeological potential for sites yielding material from the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic. During the last twenty years, much research has been undertaken in the region towards discovering traces of the first human occupation of Europe. These investigations have been concentrated in Velay, a province to the south of Auvergne which is rich in Plio-Pleistocene fauna occurring in between volcanic sediments which offer the possibility of obtaining a long sequence of palaeomagnetic and radiometric dates. Basse-Auvergne and Bourbonnais have yielded a number of classic Acheulian bifaces lacking stratigraphic context and in surface complexes of the Allier tools made on quartz cobbles have been discovered. The lithic series discovered in the Massif Central, principally in Velay, has been classified under the name "Most Ancient Palaeolithic" (BONIFAY and BONIFAY, 1983) and has been proposed as resolving the question of the time of the initial human occupation of Europe (BONIFAY, CONSIGNY, LIABEUF, 1989; BONIFAY, 1981, 1983, 1989a, b, c, 1991). This perspective, which is of considerable conceptual importance and thus must be founded on decisive arguments, is not accepted unanimously by the scientific community, as doubts have been expressed in many publications (DELSON, 1989; BOEDA, 1990; VILLA, 1991; FARIZY in DIAZ, 1993). We report here some results of an examination of the production of geofacts by vulcanism. We will refer to these as tephrofacts. These pseudo-artefacts are fashioned in materials other than flint which occur in the local environment of supposedly ancient archaeological sites. Our observations, begun in 1989, are founded on the European Science Fondation Meeting , Tautavel , sous presse - 3 - examination of a number of volcanic structures and the deposits and epiclastites associated with these structures (figure 1). These investigations were aimed at elucidating the possible presence of hominids in the Upper Pliocene and Lower Pleistocene of this part of France. Special attention has been given to the site of Blassac and part of the abundant series of supposed artefacts discovered in an ancient context there and also to the site of Soleilhac, yielding the strongest evidence for an ancient occupation of Velay. 1 - THE PRODUCTION OF TEPHROFACTS The production of pseudo-artefacts or tephrofacts in volcanic contexts, is known to have occurred in pyroclastites of the Eifel in Germany (BOSINSKI et al., 1986). We collected some tephrofacts on the site of Kärlich and in strombolian lapilli of the Schweinskopf volcano in the company of G. BOSINSKI in 1992. These tephrofacts superficially resemble human artefacts and their differentiation from the latter is difficult when they are discovered apart from the primary volcanic context. (KULEMEYER, 1986). In Velay, many Pleistocene maar tuff-rings (La Sauvetat, Les Farges, Saint-Eble, Soleilhac, Senèze, Blassac/Les Blanches), basanitic breccias (Sainte-Anne) and one strombolian cone have yielded tephrofacts with various petrological origins. Moreover, many other geofacts have been collected in a large number of volcanic sediments (Saint- Vidal, Vals, Brioude). Among these are a number of flakes and some objects with multiple flake scars with apparent ordered intent: None of them would be discarded out of hand if they occurred in archaeological contexts. However, they are undoubtedly tephrofacts which have resulted from several mechanical and thermal actions during various different eruptive stages of volcanic events. 2- PETROGRAPHY OF THE TEPHROFACTS The raw material of the tephrofacts collected come from the regional basement or from the Plio-Pleistocene sedimentary formations which have been altered by the volcanic eruptions. Some of these materials still outcrop in the immediate environment of the volcanic formations investigated. The following diverse rocks have been identified : vein quartz, pegmatitic quartz, fine grained granite, oriented granite, migmatitic gneiss with sillimanite, lamprophyre and various basalts. The Blassac-Les Blanches tuff-ring has yielded seventy-two tephrofacts. The distribution of petrographic types does not vary significantly between the chunks, flakes or pseudo-artefacts (figure 2). The strong representation of materials of mediocre quality for flaking (granites and gneiss) and the absence of flint is a distinct characteristic of this series. European Science Fondation Meeting , Tautavel , sous presse - 4 - 3 - NATURAL FLAKES In this paper we do not discuss the classic "pot-lid" flake form well known to occur as a result of thermally induced reduction sequences. We note however the absence in the literature of observations concerning the characteristics of these thermal fracture features when they occur adjacent to the edges of irregular chunks. The natural flakes derived from these situations exhibit a pseudo-striking platform produced when the fracture surface intersects an adjoining edge. Although these objects may be superficially identified as humanly produced flakes, this position can be readily discarded for flint when none of the other features of humanly produced flakes can be identified (point of percussion, ventral bulbar scar, radial stress marks, etc). Fifty natural flakes were collected for study from the tuff-rings of Blassac-Les Blanches, La Sauvetat and Soleilhac (figure 3). Some of them were in juxtaposition with the pseudo-core. Of these, fifteen (30%) exhibit cortical striking platforms. These can be subdivided into those with a total or partial cortical dorsal surface extending to the edges(11) and those with non cortical edges (4). In the case of a series produced by intentional flaking, these objects would be

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